Lit Up Magnificently

MTC Cronin and Peter Boyle

Winter 2018

The dead (a simple fact) come close to me at night. They manage houses they never lived in, polish spoons, lay tables, summon a lazy sun-filled river to lie there for hours, barely flowing through my head. They are my flesh. I trust their presence as I trust the bougainvillea outside my window at midnight is still red.

Round and round the moon moves like plants do in their sleep. The living, breathing as if their breath was kidnapped from the sky and the dead, breathing it into them. I can hear a tree splitting from a storm that took place in another lifetime and wonder where it fell.

I am alone with my guesses, lit up magnificently by all that fails.

Peter Boyle is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Ghostspeaking. He also has seven books published as a translator of poetry from Spanish.

MTC Cronin has published 20 books, including a collection written with Peter Boyle. Two collections are forthcoming in 2018, God is Waiting in the World’s Yard (Puncher & Wattmann, Sydney) and Causal (Spuyten Duyvil, New York).